


Man's Best Friend

by icewhisper



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Transformation, Crack Treated Seriously, Episode: s01e08 Night of the Hawk, M/M, len may be a puppy but he's still a little shit, the bounty hunters are original characters but not all of them???, the other legends show up but not enough to warrant tagging them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25919389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Wherein it wasn't only Jax that Savage got his hands on in Harmony Falls, but Len definitely got the furrier side of the deal.(AKA the AU no one asked for where Len gets turned into a puppy, adopted by bounty hunters, and leads a revolution in exchange for scritches.)
Relationships: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart
Comments: 9
Kudos: 65





	Man's Best Friend

He woke up with four legs.

It wasn’t the strangest way he’d ever woken up — that prize went to a much-too-lavish hotel room in Ibiza, Mick, and rings around two very specific fingers — but it ranked pretty high on the list. He gathered himself slowly, cataloging the odd lack of color in his vision, how off-kilter his center of gravity was, and just what he remembered last.

Walking. He’d reached his limit with the team and the constant Mick-shaped hole in it and slipped away. Woods. A walk. Something ambushed him, terrifying and bird-like. He’d shot at it — missed — but he’d shot it without his gloves. Normally, he always had his gloves on when he used it, because the gun itself got too cold for him to stand and he’d been messing with it lately — trying to control the odd radiation it seemed to put out. He’d been making plans to kidnap Cisco to discuss it the next time he was in Central.

He’d forgotten his gloves on the ship when he left, though. He hadn’t had them and the cold had shocked him enough that he’d dropped his gun.

The things that put the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys to shame grabbed him and he figured they must have knocked him out, because he’d woken up in some kind of lab with Jax, Savage, and a backwards cop when-

Savage had dosed them. There had been pain and he might have screamed, but Jax definitely had and-

He looked down at his hands.

It took nearly a minute for his brain to register that his hands were paws.

He tried to swear, but it came out like some kind of squeaky bark that made the matter even stranger. Somehow, though, he thought he preferred dog — he guessed — to whatever bird thing Jax had morphed into. He spared a second to pity the kid, because he’d liked him. He’d been one of the few that wasn’t on his will-probably-freeze list.

He walked with shaky legs that seemed too short, stumbling into walls and the chairs he and Jax had been strapped to. Savage sneered at him, called him an abomination — as if it was the first time Leonard had heard _that_ — and aimed a gun.

He wasn’t sure how he made it out, considering he could barely _walk_ , much less run. He mostly tumbled down the stairs, past a lackey that didn’t expect a dog running past, through an open door, and into the woods again. He wandered for a while, working through the awkward gait and rough terrain until he could figure out some kind of rhythm.

It was Jax — human again — that found him, barreling through the woods and calling his name over and over. Rip and Stein were somewhere behind him, calling for him to slow down.

“Savage still has him!” Jax snapped back, loud voice carrying through the trees. “He changed too. It wasn’t like me.” He rounded a corner at the same time Leonard threw away his self-respect and tried to bark. It didn’t work out too well, more garbled yelp than anything, but the kid honed in on it, anyway.

Leonard would have been annoyed at how Jax scooped him up if his legs — all four of them — weren’t aching.

“ _That_ is Mr. Snart?” Stein asked, incredulous. “Are you sure?”

“How many German Shepherds do you know with blue eyes?” he asked, as if that was some kind of proof. Len wasn’t sure how factual it was, but between the two of them, Mick had always been the animal lover. Len could barely be trusted to keep a plant alive.

Rip frowned at him, more curious than disapproving like he usually was. It did Len just fine. They’d changed the kid back. They could change him back too. “We can have Gideon examine him. If it is Mr. Snart-”

Another pathetic attempt at a bark, but it made Jax humph triumphantly.

“Told you.”

Gideon confirmed it with an explanation Len only paid half attention to. He tried. He wanted to understand why his body had reacted like that, but Jax was nervously tossing a ball back and forth between his hands and it kept stealing his attention. There was something about his gun and the radiation integrating poorly with the meteorite, but that made about as much sense as a space rock having some kind of magic blue serum, so he didn’t really follow it.

“He’s kind of cute like that,” Jax admitted and only looked a little apologetic. “The girls would get a kick out of it. And Ray, actually.”

If Palmer ever saw him like this, he’d ice the whole ship just to save his dignity.

“We can change him back, right?” Stein asked as the captain frowned at some readings on the screen.

“Possibly,” Rip said at the same time Gideon explained that what they’d used to fix Jax would need to be altered. The gene therapy they’d used for him was based off of blood samples Gideon had from Jax — creepy, because she apparently had them for all of them and Len definitely never gave one — and Stein, but they were theorizing they might need Lisa to fix this.

Lisa would put him in one of those horrifying dog outfits and take pictures.

She’d send them to Cisco.

It wasn’t his fault he bolted out of the med bay. It wasn’t.

It also definitely wasn’t his fault when Kronos attacked and he decided it was an awesome idea to run onto his ship with no kind of backup or, you know, _ability to fight him_. He was a foot tall and about as threatening as a… Well, as a puppy.

Damn it.

He didn’t get off before Kronos came back. The doors sealed — both sealing him away from the team and sealing in how thoroughly fucked he was — and he wished Mick was there. Mick always used to be really good at telling him when his plans went from brilliant to idiot-you’re-going-to-kill-yourself. He’d literally run right into the latter.

He _really_ wished Mick was there.

Kronos found him about the same time his version of Gideon — that was decidedly male, but also a computer, so whatever — announced they’d returned to someplace called the Vanishing Point. He didn’t have an angle to see whatever the hell was outside the windows, but if he could just stay hidden, he could figure out where he was and…

He had to figure something out. Lisa be damned, he needed to be back on two legs with his damned gun so he could shoot Savage in the _face_ with it for doing this to him. He bared his teeth at the thought of him at the same moment something locked onto the ship that caused it to jolt and while Kronos barely moved — probably used to it, the bastard — Len tumbled forward and out of his little hiding spot by the stairs.

Heavy boots. Steps. He stared up at Kronos through that odd black-and-white vision, tried to glare, and figured he’d failed. It wasn’t as if he could see Kronos’ facial expression anyway, hidden as it was under the helmet. It was a horrible look, really. Any self-respecting cosplayer could have made something better. _He’d_ made something better for that one self-indulgent trip to Comic-Con when there was a very active warrant on him a few years back and he’d needed the full helmet.

Kronos grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and Len tried to growl. It came out about as threatening as his barks did; weak, pathetic, and utterly humiliating. “Where did you come from?” the hunter asked, but any curiosity in the tone was drowned out by the Darth Vader-type tone his voice took. 

He growled — or tried to — again, but Kronos just tilted his head at him and muttered something about his eyes.

He thought he’d put him down and leave him there, give him the chance to figure a way out and back to the Waverider. He didn’t. Kronos carried him in, tucked under one arm like he was a football and as if the paneling of his armor wasn’t cutting into his tender underbelly.

It probably worked out, Len thought once he caught a quick look out a window, considering they were _in space_.

Seriously. The nerd in him would be losing its shit if he weren’t a dog right then.

He never should have left Central.

Kronos kept him.

He fucking _kept him_.

Len would have been annoyed — definitely was annoyed in the beginning — and was in the process of trying to figure out how to steal and pilot a time ship when he didn’t have thumbs. He was somewhere near _just hit the buttons with your nose and hope for the best_ when Kronos dropped him on the hard mattress in what must have been his quarters and took off the helmet.

The sound Len let out was one-hundred percent a pitiful whine.

It was the first noise he made that came out right.

_Mick_.

For a long time, he just stared at Mick — because Kronos-armor or not, it was always going to be Mick — for a long time. That pitiful whining kept making its way out of his throat until Mick sighed in defeat and picked him up. Even with his fur, the armor was cold and stiff, but Len scrambled closer to it anyway. Tiny paws tried to climb up Mick’s chest while short claws tried to grab hold. It didn’t work, but there was never going to be a version of Mick that didn’t fold at the sight of a distressed animal. Len used it to his advantage and let Mick hike him up a little higher.

That time, his paws made contact with Mick’s jaw. That old cat that they’d shared Safe House #4 with used to do the same thing and Mick would huff like he was annoyed — he wasn’t — and mutter that he hated the dumb thing — he really, _really_ didn’t.

This Mick didn’t do that. He frowned back at Len like nothing he’d ever seen before. He’d seen Mick’s face go anywhere from ecstatic to completely fucking devastated, but even at his worst, he’d never seen him so blank. Dull eyes stared back at him and Len almost wished that he’d look at him like he had when Len abandoned him. Even that would be better than nothing.

He’d only left him for a week and he’d already been planning to tell Rip to circle back in another day or two. Mick grew up on a farm. Len had figured he’d know how to survive off the land for a couple weeks, but he hadn’t thought he’d end up with the Time Masters.

He nudged Mick’s jaw with his nose when he was close enough, but resisted some internal urge to lick him. Four legs or not, he had limits. Whining until Mick had no choice but to let him lie in bed with him, though, was apparently well within those limits.

He gave into the urge after Mick fell asleep, licking short laps against his cheek like it was an apology.

_Come back_ , he wanted to say, but only a whine came out instead. _I’m sorry_.

He followed Mick the next morning, less because Mick let him out and more because Len slipped out after him. He wouldn’t let him out of his sight. Not again. The halls were unfamiliar, though, and he slunk after Mick, moving quickly across grating that was too big for his paws. One of his front ones slipped through and he tried to pull it out, but the angle was wrong and the pad kept getting snagged under the metal.

He cried out, pained, and Mick turned back towards him. Len guessed he was frowning in the way he did that said his brain was seeing what was happening but wasn’t fully comprehending it, but the helmet had returned, so he couldn’t tell for sure.

“I left you in the room,” Mick said as if that were enough to teleport Len back.

He pulled at his paw again and whimpered, high pitched and definitely attracting attention. People were going to come looking and, somehow, he didn’t think pets were allowed at the Vanishing Point. He didn’t think much of anything was allowed.

“You’re going to tear your foot off,” Mick told him, but he still came back and did something that freed Len’s paw, so that was something. He stood awkwardly, hurt paw curled inwards and definitely not touching the grating again. The chances of it happening again weren’t huge — probability-wise, at least — but he’d also been turned into a damn puppy, so he probably figured he couldn’t count on logic right then.

He set his foot down carefully and let out another cry as he lifted it back up. It looked pathetic and it was manipulative, but it got Mick to scoop him up again. Upside, he didn’t need to risk the grating again. Downside, he was holding him like a football again, so the armor had gone right back into cutting into his underbelly. It was a small price to pay, he supposed.

“What is that?” someone in matching armor asked when Mick made it into what looked like some kind of mess hall. Len thought it sounded slightly more female, but the armor didn’t give any hints.

“It followed me onto my ship,” Mick said blankly. Chased onto his ship was more accurate, but Len wasn’t exactly in a position to correct him.

“Pets are against regulation,” another hunter — male — parroted. “All non-authorized lifeforms that enter the Vanishing Point are to be captured and eliminated.”

That was _definitely_ not part of Len’s plan. He wriggled out of Mick’s arms and found his footing on the table while half a dozen helmeted faces stared back at him. He’d done worse things before, he reminded himself. His dignity might be low afterwards, but he’d survive.

He yipped — he fucking yipped _on purpose_ — rolled onto his back with his belly in the air, and let his legs kick.

“Regulation speaks to humans,” a hunter corrected after a minute.

“A dog would not harm a mission,” another confirmed.

“The Time Masters should not find out,” someone else warned.

“They will not find out,” Mick told them.

A few of them made noises of agreement. Len was pretty sure he’d just been adopted.

As brainwashed as they were, the hunters were surprisingly good at keeping him hidden. He still slept in Mick’s quarters when he wasn’t on a mission, but he spent the days getting shuffled between the others. They kept him away from the Time Masters and their ugly little robes that Len’s dog-brain always saw and thought _go run under them and bite their ankles_ . Tempting and he almost gave into the urge once, but Pluto — because some Time Master out there was a _shameless_ Sailor Moon fan — grabbed him before he got that far and whisked him away.

Granted, she gave him belly rubs after, so he forgave the injustice.

(Sometimes, he worried his brain was starting to lean a little heavily towards Puppy instead of Human.)

“Does it have a name?” Helios asked, head tilted a tad too far to the side.

Len rolled away from Pluto and her belly-rubbing — he’d be going back to that later, thank you — and snapped at Helios. It wasn’t threatening. He’d long since given up any hope of trying to intimidate any of them when he was about the same size as their boots, but it didn’t stop him from trying.

“He needs a name,” Aion agreed, staring at Len the way he always did. It made Len squirm, uncomfortable, and he ducked closer towards Mick to get away from it.

“He has one,” Mick reported, because that had apparently happened when Len wasn’t looking. His ears pointed up and he turned his head towards his partner. “Rogue.”

Dogs couldn’t laugh, but Len still found some way to lose his fucking shit.

Months — he guessed it was months, but the Vanishing Point was also outside of time — passed, though, and he started to see differences in the hunters. Lips quirked towards a smile. A sign of life in their eyes. A hint of emotion seeping into their voice. Memories were still gone — stolen by the induction process — but some echo of their old selves seemed to be coming back.

Pluto was his favorite after Mick, almost reminiscent of his sister if Lisa were a pretty Korean woman that had literally snapped men’s spines in half.

Actually, knowing Lisa, she’d probably sleep with Pluto. He might not actually be that against it. At the very least, Pluto would keep Lisa from dressing him up like some kind of idiot. And he said that as a self-proclaimed supervillain that bought his costume off a clearance rack at Sears.

But Mick… Mick was coming _back_. Len had seen the familiar twitch of fingers that said he was feeling an urge to stare at a flame, even if Mick didn’t understand where the tic was coming from. He heard the old gruffness come back, Keystone accent slipping through.

Mick started scratching behind Len’s ears the way he used to do with the cat in Safe House #4 and giving those amused huffs that said _you’re a dumb dog, but you’re cute_. Len would have been insulted if he wasn’t too busy being relieved.

(He was also enjoying the scritches, but that was completely beside the point.)

What he didn’t understand — and was more than a little annoyed by — was that he didn’t seem to be growing past the point he’d started at, but he was pretty content to blame Savage and his freaky meteorite for that.

“He’s been spying on Declan again,” Pluto told Mick, because she was a tattletale. She didn’t even give him belly rubs in apology. “They’re going to catch him eventually.”

He doubted it. He’d been doing it for weeks; sneaking away and after the Time Bastards and their tempting robes when someone didn’t watch him close enough. It wasn’t as if they could keep their eyes on him every second, torn between their own duties and the responsibility of hiding their contraband little pet. Besides, he’d always been good at slipping into places he wasn’t supposed to be. Four legs might have caused him to reevaluate some things, but he’d faced worse obstacles.

He didn’t like what he’d found; time manipulation, the Oculus, and _Savage_. If he’d been a lot bigger and didn’t have to worry about Savage recognizing him, he would have attacked the bastard the second he saw him walking the halls of the Vanishing Point. He was in on it, had been from the start, and the Time Masters had played them all like fiddles. They’d been controlling everything from the beginning.

They were the reason things had gotten so bad that Len left Mick behind.

They’d made sure the timelines locked, that Mick crossed into his own timeline as Kronos and manipulated Rip’s safe little drop-off point until Len never could have gone back for him.

He wanted to tear them apart.

He wanted to watch them burn.

He wanted Mick to burn them to the ground, but that wasn’t going to happen until Mick was Mick again.

It wasn’t going to happen until he knew. Until they all knew.

He wanted to start with Mick, to get his partner back to himself again, but Aion was closer to breaking through the brainwashing. The man — barely more than twenty, Len thought — was blond-haired and blue eyed, but he was different than the others; a little too literal, even as he came out of the mess the induction had done to him, and had a brain that seemed to process things faster than most. He wasn’t one of the more ruthless bounty hunters, but he was the one that got handed the trickier jobs, because he had the smarts to break them down.

Time Masters liked smart if the smart was under their control, Len knew, but if he could get Aion to see the Oculus and understand its function. If he could see the corruption on his own…

He told himself he had to find an opening, a hint that Aion was questioning things just enough to follow Len’s hobbled-together plan.

The opening came one time Mick and Pluto had been sent out on a mission together and Aion had hidden him away in his quarters. He’d spent a few nights with the man when Mick wasn’t around — couldn’t risk Geoffrey reporting an unauthorized animal boarding the ship — and he always let Len sleep on the bed with him, one heavy arm tossed over Len’s little body while he scratched absently at Len’s snout.

“I think I had a dog once,” Aion admitted at a whisper, eyes hazy as he tried to grab at snatches of memories the Time Masters hadn’t been able to steal.

Len climbed up onto his chest and licked his jaw.

Aion laughed. “Gunner,” he breathed, but he didn’t react to the memory he’d taken back. His hand held Len steady, thumb stroking lightly against his fur, and didn’t say anything else that night.

Len didn’t sleep. Insomnia as a human seemed to translate into insomnia as a dog, because his mind kept running as obsessively as it ever had. He needed to do something soon. The longer Mick stayed under the Time Masters’ control, the higher the risk ran that they’d manage to toss him back into the same carved out husk of a person he’d been when Len first ended up in this hell hole.

The bigger the chance _all_ the hunters in Mick’s group would revert back to that.

He hadn’t put all this work in for nothing.

He slipped out of the room behind Aion that morning, silent as he moved over the grates that were still too big for his paws, but used to them enough that he knew how to keep himself from getting stuck. He tailed — heh, _tailed_ — Aion towards his assigned post for the day, watching as the man patrolled the halls. He wasn’t quite in range of the Oculus, but Len thought he remembered a side hallway that could take them along the same path. If he could just get the journey right…

He tested it once, sneaking through the halls until he’d made it to the wellspring. He didn’t venture too close to it. Something about the glow of it made him hurt and made him think of blue flames curling around his limbs before everything blew apart.

He hated the fucking Oculus.

He shook himself out before he darted back to where he’d left Aion and spotted him — outfit the same as the rest, but Aion stepped just a little heavier with his left foot than the others did — and yipped.

Aion paused and turned back. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he told him and Len thought he could hear a touch of amusement in his tone.

He smiled back at Aion, gave another yip, and darted back down the hallway he’d come from.

“Come back here,” Aion hissed at him, but that slightly uneven gait followed after him. Len paused, waited until Aion had gotten close enough to have him back in view, and moved another few feet. Two hallways down, though, Aion tilted his helmeted head. “Do you want to show me something?”

Len gave a soft bark, ran between Aion’s feet, and hurried off down the next hall.

“You can’t go in there,” Aion argued as if he _could_ argue with a dog and as if Len hadn’t already been in there a thousand times, but he followed after him, anyway. “Rogue, get back here.”

But Len only went further into the room, luring Aion in after him. He stopped when he got close enough to the wellspring that the bad feelings started and he cowered, whimpering. He barked at it weakly before he darted back to hide behind Aion’s legs, snapping at the Oculus like it had offended him.

Aion crept closer, curious nature peeking through enough that he wanted to see. “What is this?” he wondered and turned his head back towards Len. He couldn’t see his face under the mask, but he could imagine the way Aion furrowed his brows when he was confused. “What did you find?”

After that, Aion was hooked. He snuck back a time or two on his own until one of the trips involved Len dragging some rolled-up plans into view with his teeth. The diagrams were outside Aion’s scope of knowledge, but Helios was a pro at them.

With Helios came Aries and with Aries came Arethusa and Zaman. Zaman brought Horatius in when they couldn’t connect points A and B to points C through J.

Len ran between them all as they researched, dragging new bits in with his teeth and mapping out different, obscure paths to the Oculus for research. Zaman, master of cameras that he was, kept their masters’ eyes off them for the trips.

“We need Pluto,” Horatius declared when they hit a block two months in.

Pluto was the one that found their records — the ones that listed out the identities of the hunters and where they’d been stolen from. Who they’d been. Why they’d been stolen.

Arethusa with her pretty caramel skin and dark eyes was the Flash’s granddaughter, Jenni. Her speedster genes were diluted just enough that she wasn’t as fast as her mother and grandfather, but she’d always been quick.

Zaman — Samir — was the son of some Arabian official from centuries ago, stolen away for leverage as Savage sought power.

Aion was from a small farm in Oklahoma in the sixties, his family dead at Savage’s hands when he needed extra test subjects. Aion had been the only one to survive.

“My name is Thomas,” Aion whispered as he stared down at the file. “I had a twin sister.”

“They’re working with Vandal Savage,” Pluto — Sun — said, voice serious. Her hands were still shaking. Her file said the Time Masters had disposed of her infant children. “Our mission parameters have been nothing but lies.”

“What do we do?” Horatius asked weakly. His real name was James, plucked right out of certain death in World War II.

“We need Kronos,” Aries — Steve — said without looking up from the file in front of him. It wasn’t his own. His, he’d thrown across the room when he found out who he was. He and James had known each other in their original lives. Len wondered if that was why they’d never been allowed to take missions together.

“He’s trying to kill the Legends,” Helios reminded them. Len yipped in annoyance and Helios laid a dark hand on Len’s head, murmuring to him in Amharic. He hadn’t had someone speak it since his mother passed and it made him ache for her even more when he looked at the man’s file and saw that his name was Abel. His mom had had an uncle named Abel, but he’d disappeared when she was only a child.

“He heard they may have gotten his partner killed,” Jenni said. “He hasn’t been seen with them since Harmony Falls.”

“We need him back here,” Steve insisted as he passed the file to Abel. “ _Now_.”

“I know who I am,” Mick said tightly when they handed him his file. “I never forgot.” He hadn’t forgotten, maybe, but he hadn’t cared. “I’d wanted revenge.”

“Against them?” Steve asked.

“Against him for leaving me behind,” Mick said as his fingers tightened in Len’s fur. Len whined from his place in Mick’s lap. “They killed him.”

“Savage experimented on him,” James corrected as Steve and Abel exchanged careful glances. “If he’s dead, it’s because of him.”

Mick’s jaw clenched. “Then, he dies,” he decided. “They all die.”

“My children are gone,” Sun told them as fire rained down on the Vanishing Point. “I want to be with my children. I’ll be the one to hold down the failsafe.”

“You can’t!” Jenni protested, but Sun simply picked Len up off the floor and handed him over.

“One of us must,” she said and finally looked at peace. Her eyes fell to Len and she smiled. “It will not be Mick.”

He barked, surprised, and… She knew. She knew who he was. He’d thought Abel might, but he hadn’t thought she’d known.

He had seen them talking before their fight began, though, saw the frantic way Abel pulled her aside, hurrying to tell her something not even Len’s ears had been able to pick up.

“The others are already on the ship,” Sun said as they shot another Time Master dead. “You take Mick with you and you join them.”

“Sun-”

“Run, Jenni. _Run_.”

They made it to the ship with Mick unconscious over Jenni’s shoulder and Len clutched to her chest. She sobbed as the Vanishing Point blew.

Steven flew, arcing away from the blast, even as his eyes desperately sought out James as Thomas tried to slow the bleeding. James’ left arm was gone. Geoffrey would probably be able to regenerate it, but they didn’t have time now.

“Rogue, over here,” Samir called, but Len crawled up onto Mick’s chest and rested his head on his paws. “Rogue-”

“Let him stay,” Abel told him with a knowing look. Len wondered if he knew about their connection — if it was truly a connection at all. Mohammed was a common enough last name in Ethiopia, but there was a chance the Abel staring at him was his mother’s uncle.

“What do we do now?” Thomas asked as they made it into the time stream.

“We fix some wrongs,” Abel said calmly, “starting with our furry friend.” Confused gazes flitted between Abel and Len, but Abel only smiled. “Isn’t that right, Leonard?”

Len barked.

“What?” Mick asked flatly after he’d woken up in the med bay and the others told him.

“Savage experimented on Snart,” Steve said with a wince. “His file was attached to yours-”

“You know, since you’re _married_ ,” James cut in.

“You’ve known since you found the files,” Mick said with that slow tone that most people thought was him being stupid but was really just him absorbing everything and trying to not set the whole place on fire in retaliation. “And you didn’t _say_ anything?”

“We had to confirm it was him,” Steve argued. “It’s one thing to tell you Savage had gotten your husband turned into a dog. It’s another to tell you your husband is _Rogue_.”

Mick squinted at Len. “That’s why you loved that name,” he said as Len gave a happy yip from the chair Jenni had plopped him into. “You _idiot_.”

“I thought you two loved each other,” Samir huffed, a little amused.

“They do,” James said simply. “Even brainwashed, I called Steve an idiot all the time.”

Everyone looked towards them, questioning for a moment, before realization dawned and they turned back to the matter at hand.

“Abel’s working on what we need to do to switch him back,” Steve assured him, “but it’s looking like we might need the Waverider to do it.”

“And his sister.”

For the first time in months, Mick laughed.

Len _whined_.

“I have your sister!” Jenni announced as she came speeding onto the ship with her arm around Lisa’s waist.

“Did you _kidnap_ her?” Thomas sputtered.

“...Maybe?”

“Who the hell _are_ you people?” Lisa snapped before she saw Mick and went hurrying over to him. “Mick! Where’s Len?”

“That’s why we needed you,” Mick grunted and pointed down at Len by his feet. “He’s right there.”

Lisa looked down, stared, and started to _cackle_.

Mick let her put him in outfits.

One of them was a unicorn.

The second Len was human again, they were getting divorced.

“Attention, Waverider!” Jenni and Thomas called in unison before they fell into giggles and James snatched the receiver from them.

“Prepare for boarding. We have your doggy ice cream and his owner,” James finished. “We need your med bay.”

“You’re all children,” Abel sighed.

“You’re barely older than any of us,” Samir protested.

“And yet.”

“Who _is_ this?” someone asked over the comms and Len was pretty sure it was Ray. Great. He really hadn’t wanted him to see him like this.

“Lisa Snart,” Lisa cut in. James looked down at his hand like he didn’t know when she’d taken the receiver from him. “We’ve got my brother, Mick, and some former bounty hunters. We just need to make Len human again.”

“You’ve got him?!” That was definitely Jax. The kid sounded freakishly relieved.

“And enough blackmail material that he won’t be able to give me any trouble when I make Cisco my boyfriend.”

“You need Cisco’s consent for that, Lisa,” Mick reminded her, but Lisa just waved him off.

The Legends were still sputtering when Steve locked onto the Waverider and punched in the codes to get them onboard. Mick handed Len off to Lisa.

“I’m gonna grab his clothes,” he told her. “He probably won’t turn back with them.”

Len yelped in alarm as Lisa nodded seriously. Pissed at him or not, though, Mick at least knew he wouldn’t want the others to see him bare.

“The med bay’s in the same spot as on ours,” Mick called back to the rest of them as he lumbered right past a red-faced Rip to head back to his and Len’s room.

“Mr. Rory,” Rip snapped, “I demand you stop-”

“Not on your crew, Hunter,” Mick grunted without faltering, “and I’m not into bestiality.”

Turns out, dogs can _wheeze_.

“He’s been with the Time Masters this whole time?” Jax asked, wide-eyes staring at Len as Samir worked with Stein to get everything together. Abel focused his attention on drawing a vial of blood from Lisa and getting a cheek swab.

“He’s been with _us_ ,” Thomas corrected. “We hid him from the Time Masters.”

“Then, he led us into revolting against them,” Jenni added. “Oh, by the way, we’ve got Savage tied up in a box in our cargo bay for your friend to kill.”

Kendra’s head twisted towards them so fast, Len thought he heard something pop. “ _What_?”

“Len bit him,” Steve said with a grin.

“In the ass,” James finished. “Kinda gonna be sad to lose Rogue.”

“We’ll get another dog,” Samir promised as he typed something into Gideon’s system.

“Who decided we were getting another dog?” Abel asked as he pressed a piece of gauze to Lisa’s arm and deposited the DNA samples for analysis.

“All of us,” they chorused.

“Lisa, you’re not _on_ our crew and you two aren’t even _staying_ ,” Abel reminded Thomas and Jenni, but they both just grinned at him. Jenni was the only one out of their group from the future. Her timeline hadn’t set without her the way all theirs had. She could go home and Thomas had decided to go with her. He’d said he was tired of fighting and losing people. He wanted a normal life, even if it meant finding a new name in a time that wasn’t his.

Len had a feeling it also partially had to do with his crush on Jenni, but whatever. He’d lay his bets down on that when he could _talk_.

“I could be,” Lisa argued. “Wanting to date Cisco doesn’t mean I can stomach the hero crowd _all_ the time.”

“I want a cat too,” Samir piped in, typing a little faster as Lisa’s DNA sequence came up on his screen.

“We’re not getting a whole fucking zoo,” Mick grunted at them as he came in and dumped some clothes on an empty chair. Even with black-and-white vision, Len recognized the knit of his favorite sweater; it was the turtleneck with the extra long sleeves that covered his hands. He always defaulted to it when he was feeling too out-in-the-open.

Mick remembered that.

“I’m still gonna kick your ass when it’s not considered animal cruelty,” Mick told him simply when Len padded over towards his clothes. “Don’t think you’re getting out of that.”

Len barked, offended. He’d broken everyone’s brainwashing and organized a revolt as a _dog_ and he still got no respect.

But also, the ass kicking was fair.

He whined and sat down.

“Aw, poor Lenny,” Lisa cooed.

“Come on,” Jenni told Kendra as she and Thomas stood. “We’ll let you stab Savage and do whatever you needed to do with him.”

“Mick already burned him a few times, so there might be a smell,” Thomas warned.

They led Kendra out with Ray and Sara following after for some added safety. Rip wasn’t there, too busy pouting that even his own ship had ignored his arguments about not letting the former hunters on board. Len had thought he’d be a little more grateful since they’d inadvertently saved his family, but he still seemed to be in denial that the Time Masters were more corrupt than Central’s police force.

“You guys aren’t staying?” Jax asked, disappointed as he looked towards Mick.

“You surprised?” Mick returned.

Jax sighed. “No,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”

Mick nodded, but he didn’t say he forgave them either. The team — Len included — hadn’t done right by him. The Time Masters and their manipulations were partly to blame, but this team didn’t have Mick’s loyalty and, this time, Len would go where Mick went. He’d follow Mick’s lead.

Mick reached down to scratch behind Len’s ear and scooped him up when Samir called that they were ready. He set Len down on one of the med chairs they’d reclined all the way back, listening as Samir explained where to deposit the injection and how fast it should work.

“He’ll probably be sore,” Jax offered. “I felt like I’d gone through the ringer after and, compared to him, my body didn’t change all that much.”

“I’ll get some painkillers prepared,” Abel said and glanced at Stein. ”Can you show me your supply?”

“You sure we can’t keep him like this?” Lisa asked as she bopped Len on his snout. “He’s so cute.”

“I’m not staying married to a dog,” Mick grunted. “Everyone, get out. Get the ship ready to go.”

Steve nodded. “We’ve got it,” he told him before he and James slipped out. “Take your time.”

“Help me with the curtains,” Lisa told Jax as they started pulling them shut around Len and Mick.

Closed away, Mick gave Len a look that was still a little angry and still a little hurt, but the familiar fondness was there too. He ran his fingers over the top of Len’s head. “See you soon,” he said and pressed the needle into the meat of Len’s shoulder.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, the heat washed through him, fast and painful like the time he’d gotten too close to one of Mick’s fires. It went through him from head to tail and he whimpered. Felt his body shift, bones cracking and growing before they reformed into something else. Saw his vision go black for a long moment before it all came back in glaring color. Nausea grabbed him and he barely choked it back, eyes locked on the ceiling as Mick’s hand found his. Everything hurt. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt. It _hurt_.

Then, it was over. Every last piece of him ached and his breath came in short bursts, but he could feel his head at the top of the chair and his bare feet down near the end. Bare skin. No fur. No tail.

Mick’s free hand brushed his forehead. “You with me?”

Len opened his mouth, felt dry lips pull, and nodded. Curled the fingers of one hand in until a single finger stayed out. _Give me a minute._ Mick waited, patient, until he was ready to move, but even then, he had to let Mick do most of the work getting him dressed. His limbs felt weak.

The turtleneck was a comfort as it went on, hiding away the worst of his scars and covering up as much of his upper body as it could. He pulled the sleeves over his hands with shaking fingers and watched Mick kneel on the floor to help him with his boots.

“Samir’s transferring your stuff over to Geoffrey,” Mick told him as he tied the laces. “Gonna monitor you over there and get some human samples on file for you, but we’re gonna keep Lisa with us until we know you’re stable.”

He nodded. All he wanted to do was sleep, he thought. Mick could kick his ass now for all he cared. He didn’t think he’d notice any extra aches and pains.

Mick straightened up and stared at him for a minute before he leaned in and pressed his lips to Len’s forehead. “You crazy fucking bastard,” he muttered as Len’s lips curled up in a smile. “You still gonna want belly rubs?”

Len opened his mouth, ready to tell him off, but what came out was a human’s approximation of a bark.

His face went red.

Mick laughed.

He glared, trying to force his vocal chords to remember how to make actual _words_ until he was able to force out a hoarse, “Fuck...you…”

Mick, the bastard, patted his head. “Maybe now that you’re not a dog.”

Len was _so_ getting a divorce.

The End


End file.
